An inter-disciplinary team of researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) unraveled how a toxin released by Escherichia coli (E. coli) – a human gut bacteria, is connected to colorectal cancer, offering new insights to the health impact of this prevalent bacteria and facilitating future research on the prevention of this third most common cancer worldwide*.
While human gut microbes like E. coli help digest food and regulate our immune system, they also contain toxins that could arrest cell cycle and eventually cause cell death. Scientists have long known that colibactin – a genotoxin produced by E. coli, can induce DNA double-strand breaks in eukaryotic cells and increase the risk of colorectal cancer in human. Read More...
*According to the statistics of World Cancer Research Fund 2018: https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/colorectal-cancer-statistics
The dish on the left is the E. Coli cloned by the research team
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